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Quotes about morality

501 quotes from 241 people

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We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Problem of Pain
Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Abolition of Man
Badness is only spoiled goodness.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Mere Christianity (1952), Book II, Chapter 2, “The Invasion”
Morality, like numinous awe, is a jump; in it, man goes beyond anything that can be ‘given’ in the facts of experience.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Problem of Pain
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865
- Religion
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865The Cooper Union Address (1860)
Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?
Charles Lindbergh1902–1974After visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, as quoted in The New York Times (20 April 1980)
- Good & Evil
- War & Peace
There cannot any one moral Rule be propos’d, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.
John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book I, Ch. 3, sec. 4
What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.
George MacDonald1824–1905Phantastes (1858)
- Good & Evil
Time drives everything before it, and is able to bring with it good as well as evil, and evil as well as good.
Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527The Prince (1532), Chapter IIIIn context
- Good & Evil
- Time
Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.
Bill Maherborn 1956
The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
Norman Mailer1923–2007“Hip, Hell, and the Navigator” in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.
- Art
The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Horace Mann1796–1859Lectures on Education (1855), Lecture 7
- Good & Evil
- Justice
The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore.
Horace Mann1796–1859A Few Thoughts for a Young Man (1850), pp. 37–38
- Nature